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“I’m not. It’s just—”
“It’s just you feeling sorry for yourself, Bryce. That’s all it is.”
“You don’t know everything, Marjorie.”
“I never said I did. But we’re all fighting our own battles, and none of them can be compared.”
“Damn it!” He punched the steering wheel.
“Hey.” I touched his forearm in an attempt to soothe him. “Let it go.”
“Easy for you to say.”
“None of this is easy for me to say. You know that. There comes a time, though, when you have to grow up and tell yourself that this isn’t going to color the rest of your life. You have to decide what you want in life and go after it.”
“And that’s what you’re doing? Leaving your family for Paris?”
I nodded past the lump in my throat. “Yes. That’s what I’m doing.”
“I call bullshit, Marj.”
I said nothing for a few seconds, just digested his words.
I call bullshit.
“It’s not bullshit,” I finally said. “It’s what I want.”
That wasn’t a lie. I did want cooking school. I did want Paris. I wanted all of those things. Just because I wanted other things as well didn’t negate them.
“You’re running away.”
“No. There’s a difference between running away from something and running toward something. You know my dream is to study cooking.”
“There are culinary schools here, Marj.”
“Paris is the food capital of the world. Julia Child studied there.”
“Okay, I’ll meet you halfway. You’re running toward something. But you’re also running away. There’s no reason why you can’t wait to go to Paris. Say, until after Jade has her baby.”
I swallowed down the lump. Nope, it was still there. He was right.
He was right.
“What do you think I’m running away from, then?” I asked, trying to sound light.
“This.” He gripped my shoulders and pulled me in for a kiss.
As much as our previous kisses had been hard and passionate, this one was different. It reeked of desperation.
He was desperate for something.
But what?
I stopped thinking after a few seconds and melted into it, becoming one with it and sinking into all that was Bryce. His crisp masculine scent, the hardness of his muscles beneath my fingertips. The roughness of his light-brown stubble against my cheeks. The desperate sounds of his moans vibrating into me.
When he broke the kiss and inhaled a desperate breath, I let myself go. I kissed his rough cheeks, his sweaty neck, inhaling more and more of him as I went. I nibbled the lobe of his ear and traced the shell. Then I thrust my tongue inside.
“My God.” His voice was a low rasp.
